


The first step

by DanzaNelFuoco



Series: The path to change [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Adventure, Doppelganger, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Existential Crisis, Family Feels, Gen, Introspection, Light Angst, M/M, Nakamaship, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Slow Burn, more like rivals to friends (to lover), the lover part will be in next fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 07:43:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20188732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DanzaNelFuoco/pseuds/DanzaNelFuoco
Summary: “What do you mean you’revegetarian?!” Sanji almost screamed at Luffy. Well, not exactly Luffy, but his perfect copy, who looked exactly like him from head to toe, not a single hair misplaced.- - -(Somewhere between Skypeia and Water 7)





	The first step

**Author's Note:**

> prompt 61 Maritombola: mondo sottosopra (sì, lo so sono in ritardo di sette mesi sull'evento, ma questo è il prompt che ho usato)  
upside-down world (yes I know, I'm seven months lagging behind the event, but still, that's the prompt I've used here)
> 
> \--- 
> 
> Set somewhere between Skypeia and Water 7

_The first step toward change is awareness. The second is acceptance._

_Nathaniel Branden_

“What do you mean you’re _vegetarian_?!” Sanji almost screamed at Luffy. Well, not exactly Luffy, but his perfect copy, who looked exactly like him from head to toe, not a single hair misplaced.

“Vegetarian?! But you get to eat meat, right?” Luffy, the real one, asked. And seriously, having the two of them side by side was so damn unsettling.

“No, idiot, of course, he doesn’t get to eat meat. He’s vegetarian!” Nami reprimanded him, punching his head. Now at least there was a big lump on the Real Luffy head to distinguish him from his copy.

“Ouch, that hurt!” Real Luffy massaged his head. “But how do you stretch if you don’t eat meat?”

Copy Luffy shrugged. “I never thought about it. I think I just can.”

“Uh. Weird. But you sure you don’t wanna try meat?”

Sanji left the two Luffys to sort each other out and turned to face the situation. He didn’t like this clone thing. Not a little bit. 

They had landed on Kagami Island the previous night and of course, the first thing they had learned wandering through the city was that there was a legendary treasure hidden centuries ago in the Cursed Forest. Many had tried to retrieve it, just to come back insane or to never come back again. But of course that would never stop Nami, so first thing in the morning they headed for the woods, leaving Zoro and Robin to watch the ship. The morning had been quiet, almost too quiet, but nothing had happened until they had set down for lunch when they were joined by their doppelgängers.

The first one appeared announced just by a chilling sensation crawling down their spines. It was Usopp after a few minutes that noticed the reindeer ruminating the grass not far from them.

It was weird to see a reindeer in a tropical island, a reindeer with a blue nose, no less. But it wasn’t until Copy Nami reached for him, calling him “Chopper”, that they realized who the not-talking and definitely not-partially-human animal was.

It took a few moments for all of them to recover from the shock of seeing the navigator both in front of them and sitting next to them. To Nami it was like watching in a mirror.

Copy Nami didn’t pay much attention to them, until Copy Sanji didn’t get there, too. “Oi, why didn’t you tell me we have guests?”

“Sanji-kun! You’re here!” She smiled at him, blushing, in a way that melted true Sanji’s heart even if the smile was directed at his copy. A copy who ignored her, carelessly, rolling his eyes.

Something was clearly off because no way Sanji wouldn’t have put up hearty-eyes and a silly voice in response to Nami - even if it was fake Nami. Actually, Sanji was a little bit jealous and upset with his copy, for treating her that way.

She didn’t seem to notice, though, lowering her gaze, red spreading over her cheeks to the point of her ears. Something was _obviously_ off.

“What -?” Luffy launched himself at the new Sanji standing in front of him, pinching his cheeks and pulling to check if he was wearing a mask.

“Let me go!” The copy struggled to get rid of him.

“Who are you guys? Where do you come from?” The captain reluctantly let go of him, still baffled.

“We live here.” Copy Nami answered, promptly.

“You don’t seem too surprised to see us” Usopp pointed out. He was cautious, better safe than sorry.

“Well, in this place it happens a lot. People who get in this forest are always exactly like someone who already lives here, so you see, sooner or later we were bound to meet our look-alike.” Copy Sanji explained, massaging his hurt cheek.

“Some people from outside said they had ‘entered the Mirror Dimension’, but, really, to us, _they_ are the weird ones” Copy Nami clarified. 

“So this is like… a parallel universe, connected to our universe throughout this forest?!” Usopp tried to make sense of what they were saying.

“Yes, I think you can say so” she smiled.

“I don’t think I get it” Luffy huffed.

“Doesn’t matter. We are gonna have fun” Copy Sanji licked his lips, with a grin.

“Don’t look at them like that, or else they’re gonna think you want to eat them” Copy Usopp joined them, apparently from nowhere. He didn’t exactly appear from thin air, but no one could remember seeing him emerge from the trees. It was like he had always been there, but they just didn’t notice. 

“I would be very glad to be eaten by him,” Copy Nami said high enough for everyone to ear, which caused some crew members’ jaws to go slack, Sanji’s nose to start bleeding and Nami’s anger to raise.   
  
“I would never say anything like that!” She shrieked, hitting the cook’s head.

“Nami dear, you’re beautiful even when you punch me for no reason at all” he beamed.

“Your nose is bleeding, you pervert! That’s the reason!”

Copy Sanji just looked at him not even trying that much to hide his disgust. “No one is gonna be eaten, right Luffy?” Copy Sanji addressed the fake captain.

And exactly like Copy Usopp, Copy Luffy seemed to be just lingering there, unnoticed, until the attention was driven on him.

“Yeah, well. I could go with a little food” Fake Luffy stretched his arm long enough to collect the food the Strawhat pirates were about to eat before being interrupted. All of it.

Then he proceeded to toss away the meat, wasting it. Hence the vegetarian controversy.

Exchanging a look with Nami, Sanji realized he wasn’t the only one thinking something was wrong. Ok, clones weren’t exactly normal, but they had seen Mr. 2 abilities, it was weird but not _that_ weird. It was just a feeling, a hunch perhaps, that something malevolent was at work. If they didn’t pay attention it was gonna end badly.

The problem was none of them knew what to pay attention too. Luffy was already best friends with his duplicate - though he couldn’t avoid asking every now and then if he was completely sure he didn’t want meat - and Usopp had already started to narrate his great adventure as a captain to his double, who apparently lacked in imagination.

“I don’t like it,” Chopper said, eying the animal that was supposed to represent him. He looked shaken.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s just…” He struggled to find the words. “I would be like that if I hadn’t eaten the Human Human Fruit, wouldn’t I? No medical lessons, no pirate crew, just a reindeer. Just that.”

It unsettled him knowing how easier could his life have been but also knowing that it was just a fortuitous accident that is life was now so rich and full. He tried not to think too much about it, but it was difficult when in front of you there was the other you could have been. “I don’t know if I envy him or not.”

“You didn’t try talking to him,” Sanji noticed.

“I’m not sure I want to hear what he has to say.”

“Well, I, for one, am glad that you ate that Devil Fruit and become our friend,” Nami answered without a doubt, brightening him up.

“Yes. How could we do without our doctor?” The cook added, helpfully.

“Oh, this doesn’t make me feel better at all!” Chopper giggled. “Stop it!”

“Well, I guess you would have found another doctor, right?” Copy Sanji interrupted, darkening the mood. The original felt more and more the impulse to get up and kick his ass. He empathized a little with Zoro at that moment. And thinking of that…

“Oi, aren’t there a Zoro and a Robin in your universe or whatever is the place you come from?” The cook asked. He still wasn’t sure how this doppelgängers thing worked.

That quieted all the conversations.

“A Zoro?” asked Copy Nami.

“And a Robin?” echoed Copy Usopp.

They seemed to synchronize into thinking about it, the same blank expression on the five of them, even the reindeer, who supposedly was just an animal.

“Yes,” said Copy Luffy, finally. “Yes, of course, we have them. A Zoro. And a Robin.”

“They should be here, somewhere” Copy Namy laughed, almost nervously.

“Ah, yes, here they are” Copy Usopp indicated a point where no one had thought of looking before and here they were, Zoro sleeping under a three and Robin nose deep in a book. She didn’t even raise her head to acknowledge their presence. 

It was wrong. They had done plenty of noise and neither of them had interrupted their activities. Actually, they seemed a little foggy, like the contours of their body were blurred. Like they were just made up from nothing.

Uneasiness hit every member of the crew.

They were feeling tired and drained, not to mention their lunch had been devastated by the fake captain and they were starting to have hunger pangs.

The need to leave, right now, in that precise moment, raised into them and Sanji was about to suggest to stop wasting time and start looking for the treasure, when, with perfect timing, almost as if she had read his mind, Copy Nami threw herself at him. With the corner of his eyes, he saw Copy Luffy engage both Luffy and Chopper, distracting them with a question about a proper and healthy diet which could possibly include meat, and Copy Usopp diverting his original from the issue asking him about some new invention he didn’t quite grasp. Though they were weary, they allowed the copies to drag them in the conversations.

Sanji couldn’t even help them since he was a little busy himself.

“You know, you look exactly like him,” Copy Nami said, sitting on his lap, gesturing to his doppelgänger. “Could it be that you are a little… less uptight than him?” she toyed with his tie.

“At least you could make him pay big money if you really have to be like that,” Nami snarled.

Sanji was uncertain if he should keep his senses and beware of Nami’s murderous glare or if he could allow himself to simply float to cloud nine with the doppelgänger in his arms. In the meantime, his nose had started to bleed again.

“Money? Why would I want money? There are things that money can’t buy,” her double replied, stroking the cook’s air. 

The real Nami was about to burst, a few inches from hitting very hardly with her fist some sense in that flirty version of herself that didn’t like money - that was scorning all the sacrifices the navigator had to do, all the treasures she had to rob for Arlong, buying a little more of time for her village. Yes, money could buy immaterial things too and Nami was ashamed that such a copy of herself even existed. Frustration was growing in her, driving her to the breaking point. She was gonna punch her in the face, then she was gonna grab the cook with a hand, that stupid excuse of a captain with the other, praying that Usopp and Chopper followed, and finally, she was gonna find that stupid treasure and go back to the ship.

That was when Copy Sanji, distracted her, deflating her anger.

“Have I ever told you I come from a wealthy family?”

Though that seemed to bring a little sense in Sanji, who exited from his love-induced haze to listen what his clone was saying - and he didn’t particularly like it -, the conversation had the exact opposite effect on the navigator.

“Wealthy?” She asked, uncertain. That dampened her rage, but she was wary of being distracted so easily.

“Yes, _very_ wealthy” Copy Sanji insisted, inducing Beli symbols on her eyes.

“How much is ‘very’?”

“Let’s just say it’s a lot, I’m actually a prince,” he said and the real Sanji chocked.

“A prince?” Nami laughed, her eyes normal again. “Not a cook?”

“A cook? But why, my dear? Why should I waste energy and time on _cooking,_” he spat the word, disgusted, “of all things? Other people can cook for me.”

Sanji was this close to having a seizure. He couldn’t allow his stupid clone to go on any longer. He removed firmly - but still as gently as possible - Copy Nami from his laps and was about to launch into his copy to silence him and leave when something - someone - stopped them both.

“Oi, moron, stop harassing everyone, would you?” It was Zoro’s voice. Well, Copy Zoro’s. Now awake, he was incredibly much more corporeal and active than before. Glancing at Copy Robin Sanji noticed she was more real too.

Something had changed, but he couldn’t tell what. Anyway, he didn’t believe the parallel universe bullshit anymore. His intuit was right, those things were not friendly.

“Why would you even care, shitty swordsman?” Copy Sanji replied, snatching the words from Sanji’s mouth. This was identical to their everyday bickering, and wasn’t this - whatever it was - supposed to magically mirror everything? By now, Sanji would have assumed his and Zoro’s doppelgängers would have been best friends.   
“Because it’s enough for us to be forced to put up with you, without you having to bother the rest of the world” Copy Zoro snarled.

“I don’t bother anyone. You are the useless one!”

“Wanna tell me that in my face, stupid cook!”

Which was weird since Copy Sanji had just told them he wasn’t a cook, but then they were distracted by the doppelgänger getting to his feet, anger distorting his face.

“You. Are. The. Useless. One,” he repeated, stressing every word, almost forehead to forehead with the other.

“You cynic bastard! You think you’re useful, and maybe you are but you don’t give a shit about anyone who isn’t you!” Spitted Copy-Zoro.

“Is this what we look like?” whispered the real Sanji, a shiver running down his spine. They looked feral, ferocious, when radiating anger and hate like that. They looked ready to tear each other apart. They looked ready to kill.

“Not exactly” Nami shook her head, not taking her eyes off the two. Even the other members of the crew were looking at them, the volume of their voices raised enough to gather their attention.

“I’ll kill you!”  
“Not if I can kill you first!” Copy Zoro closed his hand in a fist, then punched fake Sanji straight on the face, who stumbled back before launching himself at the other and Sanji - the real one - wouldn’t have been able of recounting how all of it happened. It was all so fast…

His doppelgänger went for Copy Zoro’s side - and it wasn’t strange at all that this Zoro had not reached for his swords in the first place, reverse shit and everything- and gripped one of his katanas, unsheathing it.

Kitetsu, the cursed one, the cook realized, surprising himself. He didn’t know he knew the name’s of Zoro’s swords and, on top of that, was able to distinguish them. He wondered if the sword was cursed as the original.

Then he realized what his clone was trying to do.

“What are you even thinking?” He asked parring the sword with his leg - he hadn’t even thought about getting up to his feet, he was already in motion as if it had triggered a reflex. Besides, seriously, this _thing_ that pretended to be him… he had no style at all. Wielding a sword like it was a fly-swatter! Well, he surely wasn’t doing this for Zoro’s sake. As if the men needed protection - even if he was just a fake.

Said Copy looked at him surprised but said nothing.

“I’m gonna kill that bastard” Sanji’s double replied, trying to get past him, his face contracted in a hateful grimace. The sword was moving toward him, so Sanji parried again.

He had got used to fighting against Zoro’s swords, he had improved his technique, refining it to the point where he was able to predict the trajectory of the blade and intercept it before half of the parabola was even completed. They had fought together, legs against swords, so many times that it had become useless as a training, but they had kept doing it nonetheless, to enjoy themselves.

The problem was that he was able to do so because he knew Zoro - what was he thinking, how he reacted, the way his body moved when he wanted to have control on the fight and when instead he let his instinct kick in as if the swords were moving on their own volition. But now he wasn’t fighting against Zoro, he was fighting against someone who didn’t have the slightest idea on how to wield a sword and that was a dangerous variable.

That’s why his copy managed to hit him; the sword cut through the cloth of his pants, reaching his skin, and sunk in the flash. Sanji flinched, pain crawling from the wound and his doppelgänger tossed him away as he would do with a rag doll.

“Sanji! What are you doing?!” Nami reached for him, kneeling on the ground beside him, Chopper right behind her, ready to tend his wound.

“I -”

“That’s not Zoro!” she hissed. “Let them fight, maybe we can escape if they are -”

“You’re not injured!” Chopper interrupted her. It was impossible, they all saw the blade cut through his leg, the pain on his features. There should have been a wound, a bloody and painful wound, deep enough to show the bone underneath the muscles. But there wasn’t. Not even a scratch.

“Does it hurt?” Nami asked.   
“Yes.” Like a bitch, he would have added, but it wasn’t worthy of Nami’s delicate ears.

And it was true, it hurt, but not like it was supposed to. Instead of stinging pain, his leg was throbbing and burning, right were he though the blade had cut. His mouth was dry and he couldn’t swallow properly, but thinking of it, that sensation was already there from before, he just hadn’t noticed. Why the fuck hadn’t he noticed? He recognized it, he had already felt like that, - like he was starving and he hadn’t drunk enough water, but it couldn’t be. He had eaten plenty at breakfast.

“Do you feel anything?” Chopper asked, poking at his leg, trying to feel a difference in the skin consistency.

“I’m thirsty,” he replied, “and starving, but no, I know you are touching where the wound should be, but the pain doesn’t change.”

If the doctor was fazed by his answer he didn’t have time to react, because their attentions were diverted by a shout.

“Watch out, Zoro!”

It had been Luffy - the real one, who exactly like Sanji, shouldn’t have gotten involved in the doppelgängers’ fight, but whatever, these things still had his nakama’s faces on them.

And then, just as the fake Zoro looked at their direction and Copy Sanji reached for his neck, the blade slicing his skin, blood dripping from the cut, the momentum giving the strength to the blade to sever muscles and tendons and bones…

Everything crumbled and the Strawhat were left alone, the doppelgängers vanished into thin air. 

“What the fuck has just happened?”

No one could really give an answer to Sanji. 

* * *

It took a few minutes for answers to came - in the shape of none other than Robin and Zoro.

How Zoro could know something Sanji didn’t was baffling the cook more than he would have thought, but mostly it was because of the smugness on his face and how he wanted to wipe it away with a kick, which of course brought all back the fact that he was that close to see Zoro’s head rolling on the grass because of him. Of course, Sanji knew it was their copies, not the real them, but still, the image was disconcerting.

“So how come you are here? Not that we don’t like those weirdos gone, but shouldn’t you be watching the Going Merry?” Asked Luffy after having washed down half the food Robin and Zoro had brought with them as if he hadn’t eaten in days.

Which might have been true, after all, according to what Robin answered.

“You were out there for three days. We were worried, of course.”

“Three days? No, it can’t have been more than eight hours! At most!” Nami tried to make sense of what the archeologist was saying, but everything was just surreal. Her mind was telling her that Robin’s tell couldn’t possibly be true, but her senses were just confirming it. She was feeling hungry, so damn hungry she might actually have been without eating for a couple of days, and so thirsty she had to restrain herself from draining the flask Zoro had given her, sparing some water for the others.

“It _has_ been a couple of days” Robin explained patiently. “I think your perception of time was distorted by this” she reached for something in a bag and showed them the broken pieces of what appeared to have been a pot. On the fragments were still visible some kind of inscriptions.

“It’s a curse, a ward against thieves,” explained the archaeologist. “The spell is written right here, it summons a spirit to protect the treasure from the ones that get too close to it. The spirit twists the behavior and feelings of the people to unsettle them and keep them busy enough to let them die of thirst and starve, to roughly translate it. Actually, it’s a little more complicated, but I’ll need to work a little on it to understand better the runes. They did something on the perception of the time passing in the cursed.”

“Are you telling me, it’s magic?” Usopp shivered.

“I think this is what the people who put there the vase though. More likely it’s an inhalation drug.”

“Could it be a drug, Chopper?” Nami asked.

The reindeer wriggled uncomfortably. “I don’t know. Maybe. But… we all saw the same things.”

“A collective hallucination, then?”

“Far be it from me to contradict you, my dear Robin, but I don’t know if it was a hallucination, they looked pretty corporeal to me. That katana cut hurt.”

“I managed to hit you with one of my swords, shitty cook?” Zoro laughed at him, but Sanji didn’t have it in him to reply. He was still thinking about his hands - his smooth hands, the hands that he never used in a fight because he had to protect them, his perfect and refined tools - gripping the hilt of Kitetsu as it sliced Zoro’s neck.

Sanji looked away, hoping to let it drop, as the others’ embarrassed silence filled the air.

“Well, maybe it is a spell. After flying to a Sky island where we defeated a god, would it be really that strange to run into magic?” Nami steered the conversation to safer ground, going back to the main topic.

“So, all our doppelgänger were… what? Just work of the enchantment?” Sanji silently thanked her, relieved.

If Robin had sensed the awkwardness, she was doing a fine job of hiding it. “Yes, it was put there to bewilder and unsettle you. It distorted and reverted echoes of your personality, if you will, feeding itself on the emotions it provoked on you.”

“Yes, but toward the ends, they were behaving strangely - well, more strangely than they already were. We were about to leave more than once, weren’t we? Because at least, _I_ was. A little against their goal, if they wanted for us to die there.” Sanji continued, hoping the killing wouldn’t turn out again.

“I suppose that having to deal with two separate groups may have overloaded the spirit, thus the inconsistencies. My copy and Zoro’s had to be simultaneously with you and with us, that may have been the cause of it.”

“Oh, we have noticed your copies were blurred at first, like ghosts, but after a while, they became more consistent.”

“I think at first those copies were faint because they were reconstructed upon your memories, but when we entered the range of the spirit, it could use us to shape the doppelgängers so they became more corporeal. Of course, this is only speculations. We will never be really sure of how this worked, seeing the civilization who put it here is long gone.”

“Yeah, but why were they even fighting? They were part of the same spirit, right?” Asked Luffy without so much tact, “It doesn’t make sense. Sanji’s copy tried to kill Zoro’s. I mean he did kill him.”

Robin’s surprise was shown by a slight widening of her eyes, while Zoro looked taken aback.

Sanji cursed their captain inwardly. He was hoping to let it slide away, but Luffy had the intense expression that he always had when he was being serious, which meant he hadn’t blurted it out out of idiocy, but he thought Zoro should know so that they could sort all that mess out, for the crew’s sake. And they would sort it out, just not now. Sanji could feel the scrutinizing gaze of the swordsman on him, but he pointedly looked away, concentrating on the archeologist.

“It does make sense, actually,” Robin was explaining after a thought. “First, killing Zoro’s doppelgänger would have allowed the spirit to reform him in the other part of the forest where we were. And second, that would have affected you. Watching a fellow crewmate die, even if he’s just a copy, it has an emotional tool.”

Yes, an emotional tool.

Pushing his fists down in his pockets, Sanji wished his hands to stop shaking.

* * *

The fresher supplies were gone by the time Sanji was back in his kitchen. His lettuce hadn’t withstood those three days out of the fridge and had withered, while the ripe peaches he had washed in the sink, ready to be baked in a cake as soon as he would return had rotted. Mercifully he had thought of putting the fresh fish his nakama had caught a few days before in the fridge, so it was salvageable. 

Cursing those damned doppelgängers for wasting food, he dumped the fruits in the bin. Maybe he could save the salad, though? If he boiled it in a consommé it wouldn’t mind if at first, it was a little dried. He could even use the fish for it, after all even if it was in the fridge that tuna couldn’t last forever.

He took out a variety of pots and pans and started to work, losing himself in the task and he was almost done by the time the kitchen door opened.

Sanji knew it was Zoro immediately, without even turning around to check. He kept stirring the consommé. 

“The other explained to me what happened in that forest.”

“I thought they would. Now, taste this and tell me if the salt is enough” Sanji almost stuffed his mouth with the ladle.

Zoro would have made a joke about Sanji wanting to poison him, knowing it would trigger Sanji on fighting about how he would never waste food to poison him. But it was so out of character for the cook to stall like this - as if Zoro understood anything about food and how much salt to put into it as long as said food was edible - that Zoro knew it wasn’t time for a joke about Sanji trying to kill him. It must have affected the shitty cook more than Zoro would have though.

So the swordsman took the ladle and carefully chewed the chunk of fish on it, as the cook leaned against the counter and lightened the cigarette constantly dangling from the corner of his mouth.

“Why did you have to fight yourself, you moron?” Asked Zoro, instead of commenting about the saltiness of the food.

Sanji took a draw and released the smoke slowly. “He was trying to cut your head.”

“My head was very safe every second of it, do you realize?”

“I know that, moss head!”  
And that was it, right? Sanji had known that wasn’t Zoro and still had got hurt trying to protect him, out of mere instinct.

Zoro was almost… touched.

“I know you wouldn’t cut my head. Or crack it open with a kick. That would be more the case. I can’t really imagine you with one of my swords,” Zoro chuckled.

“You would cut my head before I could even lay a finger on one of them,” Sanji tried to mock him.

“I wouldn’t, you know that” Zoro replied, feeling he _had to_ add it. He wouldn’t let Sanji dismiss him easily just to mull it over in his head - he had noticed his captain’s stare before. “For how much we fight and bicker and everything, I don’t think I really hate you.”

Sanji looked uncertain, torn between snarking an “oh you don’t _think_” or taking it seriously.

“I think neither do I.”

And it was answer enough.A quiet silence fell between them, the kind of content silence no one feels pressured to break.

“Do you think that’s why the doppelgängers tried to kill each other?” asked Sanji after a while, putting out his cigarette.

“Because we don’t really hate each other?"

“Yeah.”

“Probably."

“I wouldn’t have expected it.”

“Nor I. But maybe it was stupid of us. I mean, did we really need magical doppelgängers - or whatever - to know it?”

Really, Sanji had thought before their doppelgängers would have been best friends, seeing everything there was reversed. But in hindsight, it wasn’t a surprise to know he actually cared about the stupid swordsman, deep down - really really deep down, in a portion of his heart he didn’t acknowledge it existed - he had known he cared. The surprise was that Zoro felt the same way.

“This doesn’t mean we’re friends.”

“No, of course not. This just means we’re nakama.”

Sanji laughed and Zoro followed him. Nakama was just so much more than friends.

“Anyway, your soup’s too salty.”

“Argh! It’s a consommé! You wouldn’t recognize a fine cuisine if it danced naked in front of you! Why do I even bother?!”

“Because we’re nakama. _And_ friends.”

“Idiot!”

But hours later the consommé was less salty. Which was a “yes, we are” more than any verbal acknowledgment would do.


End file.
